HTC Desire Display to Move to SLCD Tech

HTC has announced that it will be replacing the AMOLED displays on several of its current line of phones with SLCD display technology, manufactured by Sony. The move will affect its top-of-the-line HTC Desire.

It seems that HTC has become the victim of its own success here as the move is down to supplier Samsung being unable to keep up with demand for the AMOLED display.

“HTC is experiencing high-demand for many of our phones, specifically our phones with 3.7 inch displays. The new SLCD display technology enables us to ramp up our production capabilities quickly to meet the high-demand,” said Peter Chou, chief executive of HTC in a statement.

The high quality colours and contrast of the AMOLED screens has been a real selling point for the HTC, so this could be seen as something of an issue. However, in the statement HTC was spinning the change as a positive move.

“The SLCD displays provide consumers with a comparable visual experience to HTC’s current 3.7 inch displays with some additional benefits including battery performance.”

Better battery life has been touted as one of the advantages of AMOLED, but HTC claims that the new SLCD screens have five times better power management than standard older LCD screens, nullifying AMOLEDs advantage in that regard. AMOLED also struggles in bright sunlight, so SLCD could win out there too. Finally, HTC also said that SLCD can now compete on viewing angles too, thanks to Sony’s “VSPEC III technology”.

An HTC spokesman told TrustedReviews that both variants will be on sale at the same time and that it believed that that most people will not be able to tell the difference between the two types of display. It is not clear at this stage how they will be differentiated in the market, if at all.

Looks like we’ll have to wait and see if this becomes a PR problem for HTC over the summer or a non issue.

terminalterror

July 26, 2010, 2:37 pm

Another possible advantage to SLCD over AMOLED is that the SLCD panel will be a true 800*480 display (i.e. 3 sub-pixels in each pixel) whereas the AMOLED display is a pentile matrix display, and has only 2 sub-pixels per pixel.

I don't know how much difference that would make, as my AMOLED Desire's screen looks fantastically sharp and detailed.

The link below explains what a pentile matrix is, in the context of the Nexus One which has the exact same AMOLED screen as the HTC Desire: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets...

Obviously I'll reserve judgement until we get an SLCD sample in the office but it has the potential to be a good Android alternative to those of us who love the iPhone 4 screen but don't want to be tied to Apple.

autosapien

July 26, 2010, 8:13 pm

Agreed. I hate the PenTile system on my Nexus One so see this as an enhancement to the screen. PenTile makes text look blurry and I would not buy another phone that uses it.

Are there any OLED displays that do not use PenTile? Or is it inherent to the technology?

Runadumb

July 26, 2010, 9:11 pm

I'm more interested in battery life improvements than anything else. The screen on my nexus one is normally around the 65-70% mark on whats draining my battery, and thats with the contrast low. Hope this area sees a huge improvement over the next few years.

WestHej

July 26, 2010, 11:26 pm

Does this mean all the colours won't be super-saturated and look awful or was that jsut a software thing?

ChaosDefinesOrder

July 27, 2010, 2:07 am

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